Run as fast as you can...

Swiss Alpine Race - July 25

Davos is a city in the northeast region of Switzerland well known for skiing, natural beauty, and it’s annual Spengler Cup ice hockey tournament, which Canada has won 11 titles since the country’s first team invitation and participation in 1985. On this fine Saturday, I ran in the Swiss Alpine Race. Throughout the day there were many events including a WALK, 11km, 21km (half marathon), 31km, 42km (marathon) and the ultramarathon of a 78km distance. I had chosen to run the 11km race. Upon our arrival in Davos we watched the winner of the utlramarathon cross the finish line with a time of about 5 hours and the casual salt stains all over his shorts as it didn’t have time to dry and disappear. The 11k run consisted of a 150m incline – but this was mainly at the beginning. Everyone crossed the finish line and it was beautiful to run in such scenic mountainous and lakeside landscape on road and trail paths.

Windsurfing - July 26

The next day, three of us ventured to the opposite side of Switzerland – southwest near Sion in the French region to tryout windsurfing. It was much more difficult to catch the wind and position my board and sail accordingly to get good momentum across the water. This is something that I’ll have to pursue a bit more. Our instructor spoke English, French, and German and even drove us back to the train station after our day on the water. Since it was our first time in Martigny, he was very courteous to have us try some apricots from the plentiful orchards. He also led us to a small amphitheatre where they had cow fights because it’s instinctive for cows to fight over a good patch of grass and so two cows would fights. We learned about the history of pirate mountains and current workers that build scaffolding on the mountains to prevent avalanches. Our windsurfer instructor seemed like a Swiss Renaissance man as he knew languages, also taught tennis lessons, knew everything about the history of the land and wanted to share it with us. He didn’t let us get on the train before inviting us to return and this time go to Sion. Maybe I’ll just have to do that…